What Is Kashmiri Kahwa? Kashmir’s Saffron Kahwa Tea and How to Make It

The kahwa drink belongs to a small family of Kashmiri teas, and it is the one made without milk. Our 2018 staff training manual files it among our chais under the name “Classic green chai - Kashmiri Kawah.” Our Tea 101 answer to customers has always been that it is the one chai “only drunk plain as it’s made with a green tea base.”

Kahwa is drunk across Afghanistan and parts of northern Pakistan too, but it is above all a Kashmiri drink. The writer of our 2016 story On Kashmiri Roots and Teas traces it to a confluence of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh traditions in the valley, which forged a distinct language, culture and tea-drinking habit. A Srinagar travel consultant once described it to our blog as “a liquid identity of Kashmir.”

For Kashmiris who live elsewhere, a daily pot at home keeps a connection to a place they may not often visit. The same writer, whose mother is Kashmiri, used to drink it only on visits home; living in Mumbai, she began brewing it herself, first from dried green leaf her mother brought on visits to Mumbai and later from ready kahwa mixes sold in shops across India. Our own loose Kashmiri Kahwa has been on our store since 2014, and the tea bag version since 2016.

Unlike most of India’s chai, kahwa is made with green tea, not black tea, and it is never boiled with milk. That makes it lighter and more fragrant than a cup of masala chai, closer to a spiced green tea than to a milk tea. For the wider picture, see What is chai? and Types of chai in India.

Families vary the balance, and some ready blends add dried rose petals. Our own blend keeps to the classic six: its ingredient list reads green tea, saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, almond and clove, with no rose and no added flavoring.

Saffron, the color and the scent

Saffron is what people remember. We have long put it plainly: kahwa’s “signature flavor is derived from the use of saffron strands.” We have also described our own blend as green tea “from one of the best tea gardens, top notch almonds and the finest of cinnamon, cardamom and clove,” with saffron, “the golden spice,” at its heart.

You can see what saffron does by watching the leaf. Our tasters note that the wet leaf turns a dark olive green, as any green tea would, yet the liquor comes out golden yellow, with “a lifted aroma of saffron and sweet spices.” The tea alone would give a paler, greener cup; the gold is the saffron’s.

The almonds at the bottom

Those almonds are often the best part. One reader of our 2016 story, who first tasted kehwa at a Kashmiri friend’s home, remembered “the crunch of the almonds with every other sip … and finally using a spoon to scoop up the residual almond cardamom cinnamon mix.” In another Still Steeping story, a writer sipping kahwa in New Delhi is teased by her Kashmiri friend for always wanting “more almonds than we normally put into our kahwa.”

The almonds also make kahwa different on the label. Across our whole chai and green tea range, Kashmiri Kahwa is the only blend that declares an allergen, and that allergen is almond.

Kahwa shares three of its spices with masala chai. For how cardamom, cinnamon and cloves behave on their own, see Chai spices and chai masala and Cardamom (elaichi) chai; for the base leaf, see What is green tea?

This saucepan method is the everyday home version. Our blog describes the same steps: boil dried green tea leaves with a little crushed cardamom, a few cinnamon sticks and, “for some real panache,” strands of saffron, then add sugar and crushed or slivered almonds.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (about 500 ml) water
• 1 to 1½ teaspoons green tea leaves (about 2 to 3 g), or 2 teaspoons of a ready kahwa blend
• 2 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
• 1 small cinnamon stick (about 2.5 cm, 1 inch)
• 2 cloves
• 6 to 8 saffron strands
• 6 to 8 almonds, slivered or crushed
• Sugar or honey, to taste

Method

1. Wake the saffron. Soak the saffron strands in 1 tablespoon of warm water while you start the spices. This draws out the color.
2. Simmer the spices. Put the water, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves in a saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Add the tea. Turn the heat to its lowest, or off, and add the green tea leaves and the saffron with its water.
4. Steep. Leave it for 2 to 3 minutes. Taste: it should be fragrant and golden, not bitter.
5. Prepare the cups. Put a few slivered almonds in each cup, with sugar if you take it.
6. Strain and serve. Strain the kahwa into the cups, stir and drink hot. If you use honey, add it once the kahwa has cooled a little.

Make it your way

Many Kashmiri homes boil the leaves along with the spices, which gives a stronger, more astringent cup; steeping off the heat gives a softer one. The difference comes from the green leaf: boiling draws out more of its bitter, drying side, while the spices stand up to the heat either way. For a plain early-morning cup, one of our writer’s uncles skips the sugar and almonds and uses just a few kahwa leaves, ground cinnamon and cardamom.

Our tasting team’s own brewing sheet sets the same limits for our blend: drink it plain or with honey or sugar, and leave out the lemon and the ice.

Do not worry if the first pot is not quite right. Kahwa takes a little practice even for keen tea makers: two American chai brewers we interviewed in 2015 tried kahwa among the recipes they brought home from India, “with varying degrees of success.” Read their story in Cross Country in Search of the Chai Wallah.

Our two Kashmir stories, both written from inside Kashmiri families, describe the samovar of coals that keeps it boiling, the tiny metal cups too hot to hold, the 3 a.m. cup, and the big weddings where Kashmiri waiters now pour it from samovars.

Both start from green tea and both come from Kashmir, but they taste nothing alike. In Srinagar the difference matters enough to be the first question the chaiwallah asks (see Kahwa in Kashmir).

Kashmir’s third tea, and the newcomer

Kashmir has a third tea as well: dodh chai or mith chai, the same tea leaves boiled with milk and sugar and blended with aromatic herbs, which tradition allows to be served to revered guests with taktich, a sweet, hard bread from the Kashmiri bakery. Noon chai, also called sheer chai and “royal pink in color,” is the one drunk after a big meal of rogan josh, tabak maaz or dum aloo.

Around the 1970s black CTC tea arrived too, and at first only the well-off drank it. The writer of our 2020 story says her mother had her first sip of CTC chai on finishing college in 1981. By the end of 1985, every household in Kashmir knew it, and the shops of SR Ganj in Srinagar sold it alongside kahwa and noon chai.

Over the border the pink tea takes a slightly different form: our old Tea 101 archive notes that in Pakistan, noon chai is a bright pink flavored with pistachios and cardamom.

The full story of the pink one, with its recipe and why it turns pink, is in Kashmiri pink chai (noon chai). If you want saffron in a milk chai rather than a green tea, our Kashmiri Saffron Rose Chai blends chai with saffron, rose petals and green cardamom. Our tasters describe it as a bright, brisk, medium-bodied cup: saffron on top, rose in the middle and green cardamom lingering at the finish.